Illustration Friday theme - "swarm"

Bees aren't the only creatures that swarm...

This is drawn from a photo of two of my aunts probably taken in the early 1920s. I love that the photographer set them off to one side of the image instead of centered. I also love their little buttoned boots and matching hats and coats.

Going sledding

If it weren't already February vacation week, today would be a snow day...

I had a model for these two, but they had to be developed from very quick sketches as she didn't stay still long.

I'm probably not going to have time to create something new today, so here is a piece I did a long time ago. It's a collage of watercolored paper incorporating some textures created using Saran wrap (background, second bird from left, plus wing of far right bird). The Saran wrap does more interesting things if you have more than one color of wet paint to lay it into.

Another step by step illustration

I thought I'd show a step by step for this one. Here's where the image has been painted in gouache with white paper left where the ink will go. The next stage is covering the whole thing with ink.

  Here the ink and gouache have been washed off. The colors are much paler because what's left is a stain.

The final image with some watercolor on top to bring the surrounding trees forward and push the house back.

Friends

Playing dress up

Taking the dog for a walk

I said I'd have to find things to do for the little girl who looked bored in my post of February 11. Here she is getting ready to take the dog for a walk.

Gouache and ink illustration

This is another piece using the gouache and ink method, touched up a little in Photoshop to remove some black smudges. I had seen a photo of the tree in a magazine and immediately thought it would be great for climbing!

Step by step illustration

I just bought a set of watercolor markers and wanted to try them out. Here is the sequence of a painting I did with them starting with a rough pencil sketch.

I then did a base painting of watercolor with some salt thrown in for texture.

It's a bit hard to see but the pencil sketch has been added.

And here's the more-or-less finished piece done in markers that have been blended on the page.

I read about an artist who found a way to preserve the liveliness of her pencil sketch while she took the piece to a more finished state. She scanned the sketch into the computer, darkened the lines in Photoshop, printed it out on watercolor paper and then added color. That's what I did here and I think it works. You can click on the image to see it more closely.

                                                 Happy Valentine's Day!

This little girl showed up while I was sketching. She's looking bored so I'm going to have to find things for her to do.


In the colored version she looks more sad than bored and doesn't quite have the personality of the sketch.

Story hour sketches

I went to story hour at the library yesterday and these two pages of sketches are the result. Thank you to the gracious librarians and parents who let me be there with my sketch book. The kids totally ignored me which was great.

This is inspired by two little girls in church last Sunday. They aren't related but share the same first name and there may be a bit of hero worship from the little one.

 This is the finished version. I struggled with this one. The pew was too dark and threatened to overpower the girls for a while, but strengthening the outline helped as did adding some different colors in the shadows via watercolor pencils.

Whenever I draw a dog from my imagination it ends up looking like a yellow lab. Why is this? We had cocker spaniels and an Irish setter when I was growing up. So I tried sketching a bunch of different dog faces and body types - though a couple of labs still snuck in.

A snowy picture appropriate for what I can see outside my window. I used the gouache and ink technique that I learned about from Laura McGee Kvasnosky's website www.lmkbooks.com/fun/gouache.php. I love the fact that you can't be quite sure how it will turn out until you've washed off the ink.